Australian film: Eye of the Storm, Sleeping Beauty, The Sapphires and Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is an unusual Australian film: distributed on almost 600 screens at home, it was also a mega-hit abroad. Tellingly, it is almost completely devoid of on-screen Australian content. Yet when the year is over, it will top the local box office charts because it passed the government test for its lucrative 40% Producer Offset tax rebate.

But for the most part, Australians ignore Australian films – Catriona McKenzie's recent Satellite Boy is one of many recent productions that, while very well-regarded, are not well-watched at the cinema: it has grossed $212,000 at the box office to date. Australian cinema produces one or two local breakout hits a year. And even these, in turn, are largely ignored by the rest of the world.

Take the previous three year's biggest local box office hits: The Sapphires ($14.4m), Red Dog ($21.4m) and Tomorrow When the War Began ($13.5m). They traversed cultural ground: as Australian as Gatsby is American. An Aboriginal musical group touring Vietnam during the war; a Kelpie in an outback mining town in the 1970s; and a group of holidaying Australian teenagers who unexpectedly take arms against a foreign invasion.

And yet none of those films found a sizeable overseas audience. The Sapphires has grossed just $US2.4m in US theatres, even with the nous of indie distribution king Harvey Weinstein behind it. Red Dog and Tomorrow When the War Began struggled to even find a North American release. It has been years since culturally-resonant Australian films of the early-90s such as Muriel’s Wedding or The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert hit a chord with North American audiences.

Our biggest Australian films are treated by overseas audiences the way the majority of our films are treated by local audiences: with indifference. More than half of the 27 first release local features distributed last year were shown on less than 20 screens. They usually find a home among the independent cinema chains along the east coast, cutting out vast numbers of the population.

The local film industry has changed according to producer Brian Rosen, who led the government’s former financing arm, the Film Finance Corporation. While the quality of film has lifted in recent years, the screen space for Australian film is shrinking as art-house cinemas play more blockbusters and alternative content, while local television dramas such as The Slap and Rake lure traditional art-house cinema audiences back to the couch. The few films that do work tend to tap into nostalgia.

“Films that work in multiplexes or go national are throwback films that show Australia as it once was: they show Australia at a time when it was less complicated,” Rosen says.

Australian films typically make up just 4-5% of the total $1 billion-plus Australian box office and there is little sign that will change any time soon.

"It's partially a question of scale," says Andrew Mackie, the co-founder of Australian distributor Transmission Films, which has released several Australian films (often in conjunction with Paramount Pictures) such as Fred Schepisi’s The Eye of the Storm and the controversial Sleeping Beauty – a rare Australian entry at the Cannes Film Festival.

Sleeping Beauty: Rachel Blake as Clara

"Australia doesn't produce a high volume of feature films in comparison to other key markets. It only takes a single hit Australian film to skew that percentage, and I'd suggest that given the number of films we produce it isn't quite as bad as one thinks.

“Some of Transmission's Australian features have had respectable if not huge box office results – but outperformed up to three times over on DVD, grossing more than some studio blockbusters.”

And yet when an Australian film is made for the international market, we tend to treat it as a second-rate Hollywood knock-off, says Seph McKenna, who, as Roadshow Films head of Australian production, is one of the architects behind Gatsby.

“When we go up against Hollywood and try to make internationally-oriented films we lose and we lose because our production budgets aren't big enough; we lose because we don’t have big enough actors to cast.”

Eye of the Storm: Geoffrey Rush in Fred Schepisi's 2011 film

There are no simple answers. Local distribution will almost certainly be forced to change, as it has in the US where video-on-demand and a shorter theatrical window are commonplace for independent films. At a deeper level, the terms which unlock government funding are also ripe for review.

Most independent Australian films still require more cash than the Producer Offset can provide and so must look to the government’s funding agency, Screen Australia. Their terms require both a local distributor and a rest-of-world sales agent – two parties which do not necessarily value the same content, according to McKenna.

Change is underway. The election is yet to come, and Screen Australia is mid-way through a period of renewal, with chief executive Ruth Harley's five-year stint coming to an end.

Through it all the local industry is continuing to produce strong work. Among notable releases later this year are the multi-part drama The Turning, an adaptation of the Tim Winton novel which also marks the directorial debut of actors David Wenham and Mia Wasikowska; film festival favourite The Rocket; and a remake of classic 80s ‘Ozploitation’ film Patrick. Among bigger-budget global-oriented fare are films such as UK-Australian co-production The Railway Man, starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, and Adoration, starring Naomi Watts and Robin Wright. Audiences, both Australian and international, will decide their fate.

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